— This is the script of CNBC's news report for China's CCTV on August 14, 2019, Wednesday.
In the early July, Boeing said they will allocate $1b to compensate the families of the victims of the 737Max crash and eliminate influence, a specific compensation plan also released. Half of that is cash payment to victims' families. Boeing will offer around $50m short-term financial support or compensation to families of the 346 victims died in those 2 airline crash, according to Indonesia local reports.
Legal heir of every victim can get a compensation of $145,000 and that was confirmed by Indonesia officials later. But one thing to be noticed is that this money is earmarks of Boeing, it is not related to the ongoing lawsuit filed by the victims' families. That is to say, Boeing has to pay more, if the victims' families win the lawsuit. This compensation is actually relatively in time, but some victims' families are not happy with that, compared to money, they are more concerned about the crash investigation and finding the victims' bodies etc.
Boeing is trying to rally their credits though; no airlines companies want to take the safety risk.
Tuesday, US time, Boeing confirmed that 737MAX got no orders in July this year, after grounding in this March; Boeing has not received any new orders of 737MAX for 4 straight months. Boeing said that if grounded for too long, it could stop producing the 737Max. and that probability if growing if you see the latest stance from regulators. Stephen Dickson, new FAA administrator, said in his oath of office that they don't have any go-around plan for 737MAX now, and reiterated safety is the top priority.
Stephen Dickso, FAA Administrator
"This plane will not fly in commercial service again until I am completely assured that it is safe to do so,"
Elaine Chao, Secretary of Transportation also pushed Dickson to do a further investigation on 737MAX.
And she also proposed a reform suggestion to this institution. All of that means Boeing is under great regulation pressure.
Additionally, Boeing will be impacted more if there is no hope for 737MAX to go-around, for example, delay or even cancel the R&D of another new mid-size aircraft, which has been planned for some time, many US presses reported that.
797 aircraft, which was widely reported, was seen as the hope for Boeing to dominate airlines industry, however, because of the airlines crash, Boeing failed to win utterly in this competition and lost its advantages over the Airbus.
Based on the data released by these 2 companies, we can see that Airbus delivered more aircrafts than Boeing did in recent several months, on current trend, Airbus is expected to replace Boeing as the biggest commercial aircraft producer by the end of this year.
Airbus' stock price has risen more than 50% this year; on the contrary, Boeing lost most of it gains collected at the beginning of this year, with only 3% increase till now and it is one downward trend recently.
Wall Street was boosted by easing of trade war overnight, while Boeing closed down. Some analysts still hold an optimistic attitude to 737MAX, but at least for now, investors probably need more time to wait for a chance to turn things around.